EdTech Situation Room Episode 35

Welcome to episode 35 of the EdTech Situation Room from January 4, 2017, where technology news meets educational analysis. This was our first show of 2017, starting our second year of live webcasts on YouTube and archived audio podcasts! Visit https://edtechsr.com/links to access all referenced links from our show (as well as some we didn’t have time to discuss.) This week Jason Neiffer (@techsavvyteach) and Wesley Fryer (@wfryer) discussed news coming out of the soon-to-start Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada. They also discussed the rise of VPAs (virtual personal assistants), genomics and the potential of CRISPR to not only transform agriculture but also impact a wide variety of medical applications, our need for more family-oriented connection apps, and the recent legislative victory of French workers over the tyranny of work email. They also talked about “The Trump Effect” as described by Walt Mossberg as well as the ability for Google’s DeepMind AI to read lips better than human beings. Follow us on Twitter @edtechSR to stay up to date about upcoming show times. Please refer to our podcast shownotes for links to all referenced articles, videos, and resources from the show, and take a few minutes to complete our listener survey on http://wfryer.me/edtechsr.

Shownotes:

  1. EdTech Situation Room Listener Survey: wfryer.me/edtechsr
  2. Follow @edtechSR on Twitter!
  3. Audio podcast feed (Subscribe with iTunes or Stitcher)
  4. Video version on YouTube
  5. Check out our video podcast feed and subscribe to our YouTube Channel (episodes also in this YouTube playlist)
  6. Jason Neiffer (@techsavvyteach)
  7. Wes Fryer (@wfryer)
  8. What Google, Microsoft, and Amazon did this week in the race to be everyone’s favorite virtual assistant (Venturebeat, 17 Dec 2016)
  9. Gartner Says by 2019, 20 Percent of User Interactions With Smartphones Will Take Place via VPAs (Gartner, 21 Dec 2016)
  10. Mattel’s $300 Echo clone will read your children bedtime stories (Verge, 3 Jan 2017)
  11. Google’s DeepMind AI can lip-read TV shows better than a pro (New Scientist, 21 Nov 2016)
  12. Genomics: How CRISPR is changing the food industry (Food Dive, 21 Dec 2016)
  13. Tales of Digital Distraction: French workers have won the right to ignore business emails that arrive after hours (CNN; 2 January 2017)
  14. Technology and Families: We need more apps and devices designed to help families connect to each other (Re/Code, 4 January 2017)
  15. President Trump: Mossberg: The Trump effect (Re/Code, 4 January 2017)
  16. Book Review: The Industries of the Future by Alec Ross (Wes Fryer, 23 December 2016)
  17. Wes’ Geek of the Week: Hover Camera (@hovercamera) https://gethover.com/
  18. Jason’s Geek of the Week: Text Now, free texting and dirt cheap pre-paid mobile https://www.textnow.com/